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— A Book, a Play, and an Event!

Featured in this book by journalist, Aesthetic Realism Associate, and editor Alice Bernstein is a groundbreaking short play written in 1955 by Ossie Davis and appearing in print for the first time. The publisher is Third World Press (Chicago), the respected independent black-owned publishing house founded by Dr. Haki Madhubuti.
     In her introduction, Alice Bernstein tells of the conversations with Ossie Davis in 2004 that led to the unearthing of this play and the idea for the book. With Mr. Davis's encouragement, she gathered documents and photographs about the unsung heroes of Clarendon County that make history come alive, and essays by authorities on the education that can end racism: Aesthetic Realism, founded by the philosopher and critic, Eli Siegel.
Here through the art of the drama, the beloved actor, activist, and author Ossie Davis (whose bio appears at the right) gives life to a pivotal, little known chapter in Civil Rights history. We meet the Reverend Joseph DeLaine and other courageous African-American parents in South Carolina who, in the 1950s, fought against racial inequality in education. They risked their lives to file the first legal challenge to segregation in the public schools — one later combined with other cases in the landmark "Brown v. Board of Education."

(Right) Former NY mayor David Dinkins, Ruby Dee, and Alice Bernstein spoke at a performance of "The People of Clarendon County" at the Schomburg Center for the Study of Black Culture in New York City.

     






     Ossie Davis wrote the play to celebrate the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education outlawing public school segregation. The play was performed just once, in 1955, for an enthusiastic audience of union brothers and sisters at Local 1199's Bread and Roses Cultural Project in New York City. The young actors were Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and Sidney Poitier.
     In an event at the Harlem School of the Arts in New York City on November 28, 2007, with Ruby Dee as a featured guest, the book was launched and the play was publically presented for the first time in over 50 years. The overflow audience learned about the causes of racism and the answer given by Aesthetic Realism. They learned about the enormously successful Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method, which, for over 35 years, has been enabling children at all grade levels and in all economic conditions to learn every subject in the curriculum and to become kinder!
     Award-winning actor Ruby Dee, wife of Ossie Davis, writes:
"It moved my husband to think that fifty years later, school children might learn about history by reading or acting in his play. In addition, Alice's book will also inform people about the success of the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method in enabling children to learn every subject, and ending prejudice in the classroom."

Ruby Dee is shown left, with Alice Bernstein and the student actors in the historic presentation at the Harlem School of the Arts. And this is only the beginning of the story.
     This educational/performance event is now being presented nationwide—free to the public-—in schools, colleges, universities, churches, community organizations, and museums."The People of Clarendon County" has been presented in the Congressional Auditorium of the US Capitol in Washington, DC, with featured guests: House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn, Congressmen John Conyers (MI) and Elijah E. Cummings (MD) of the Congressional Black Caucus, and Jose E. Serrano (NY).

»View the log for "Clarendon County" event

»View our special events

New on our home page! Scenes from the Ossie Davis play as presented by young actors at the East Elmhurst Community Library, Queens, NY.

Library Manager Johnnie O. Dent speaks, right, about the effect of this event on the Junior Friends of the East Elmhurst Library, Queens, NY.

On Aesthetic Realism & Eli Siegel

Information we are proud to include
on all our printed programs link here.
.

Remembering Ossie Davis

Ossie Davis (1917–2005), actor, director, writer, producer, and human rights activist, was born in Cogdell, Georgia. He attended Howard University (1935‐39), the first child in his family to have a chance to go to college. Because of his love of poetry and literature, he spent a lot of time studying English. "When I first read Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," he wrote years later, "I knew I had found a brother." Sterling A. Brown, the eminent educator and poet, with whom he studied Negro Literature, was to be a life‐long influence. Brown, he continued, "knew all about John Henry, Br'er Rabbit, and High John the Conqueror. He taught me that the blues were poetry, and that the stories I knew so well from my own childhood were first‐class literature" (With Ossie & Ruby—in This Life Together, Harper Collins).
     Ossie Davis' acting career began in 1939, with the Rose McClendon Players in Harlem. In 1946, he made his Broadway debut in Jeb, where he also met actress Ruby Dee. They were married in 1948 and had three children. His Broadway credits include Anna Lucasta, The Wisteria Trees, Green Pastures, Jamaica, Ballad for Bimshire, A Raisin in the Sun, The Zulu and the Zayda, I'm Not Rappaport—and Purlie Victorious which he wrote and starred in on Broadway in 1961.
     In 1950 he made his film debut in No Way Out, which starred Sidney Poitier. Other film credits include The Cardinal, Let's Do It Again, Do the Right Thing, Grumpy Old Men, and many more. He directed Cotton Comes to Harlem, Kongi's Harvest, and Black Girl, among others, and co‐produced with Ruby Dee & Delta Sigma Theta, Countdown at Kusini. His extensive television credits include Roots: The Next Generation, 12 Angry Men, Touched by an Angel, and For Us, the Living. He and Ms. Dee produced several TV specials and "With Ossie & Ruby" which aired on PBS for three seasons. His writings include fiction, essays, drama, speeches, articles, and poetry.
     All his life, Mr. Davis worked tirelessly for human rights, social justice, and the rights of workers. He worked with both Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X in the 1960s and supported many organizations—from the Freedom Riders, the NAACP and Urban League, to the Black Panther Party. Mr. Davis received many, many honors and citations, including the U.S. National Medal for the Arts (1995), the New York Urban League Frederick Douglass Award, the NAACP Image Award, and the Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award (2001). In 2004 Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee were recipients of Kennedy Center Honors. Mr. Davis died on February 5, 2005.
 He was the posthumous recipient of the Marian Anderson Award, and in 2007, the joint autobiography With Ossie & Ruby—In This Life Together won a Grammy Award in the Best Spoken Word Recording category. A collection of selected speeches and writings by Ossie Davis, Life Lit by Some Large Vision (Atria Books), was published in 2007 with editorial notes and foreword by Ruby Dee.

A Librarian Speaks:
"Those of you who are friends of the East Elmhurst library know we have a 'Junior Friends' group. And they are the smartest group you could ever want to be involved with. They came together as a group, they cast it themselves, and they voted as to who would take what part. They all were there with tears coming from their eyes as they read about people finding out for the first time that they had rights, that they didn't have to sit on the back of the bus! They started reading their parts, and you should see the progress that is taking place as they rehearsed, and as they came to realize that these things really happened. And they are just as serious as they can be. You know a whole lot of things are taking place with this project." —Johnnie O. Dent

© 2005-2012 by Alliance of Ethics & Art (AEA).

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